IPNet Solutions creates a suite to make enterprisewide e-commerce easy to use
The key to making electronic commerce work is 100 percent participation, according to Robert Shields, marketing director for IPNet Solutions Inc. of Newport Beach, Calif. "The way you get that is to lower the cost and make it simpler to use," Shields said. The company's IP.Net.Suite includes IP.object.link, which lets trading partners exchange any type of data or business object created by various enterprise resource planning applications.
The reliability factor
It wasn't so long ago that the federal government had a reputation for buying lots of clone PCs, often of poor quality. Reliance on cumbersome requirements contracts and policies that restricted buys to the lowest price pro- duced this result. Sometimes machines arrived still needing assembly. Along came total cost of ownership, procurement reform, wide-open General Services Administration schedule contracts, governmentwide acquisition contracts and online buying. In a few years, a measure of market dynamics entered federal computer
Access America opens a full-service site for seniors
The National Partnership for Reinventing Government has unveiled a Web site designed to provide senior citizens with access to multiple government services. Access America for Seniors at www.seniors.gov is under the auspices of Vice President Al Gore's Access America program. The seniors program comes just a month after Gore presented Access America for Students, which serves up government services for students [GCN, March 29, Page 9].
This device lets you peek into your network's future
Box Score: A Every network administrator needs a crystal ball. Most practitioners of the black art of network management rely on software tools such as Hewlett-Packard Co.'s OpenView or IBM Corp.'s Tivoli/TME. The GCN Lab took a peek at a hardware crystal ball, the Kinnetics Network Manager from Loran Technologies Inc.
GTSI upgrades ordering site for federal users
Leading reseller Government Technology Services Inc. last month upgraded its Web ordering site to attract electronic commerce orders, particularly IMPAC credit card orders of less than $10,000. The Web site at www.gtsi.com maintains supporting links at the left side throughout and links to GTSI's government information technology portal on the right side, said Karla Knickerbocker, Web marketing manager for the Chantilly, Va., company.
Breaking News
Jerry Edgerton, MCI WorldCom's senior vice president of government markets, said the company already has begun taking orders from USDA offices. Agriculture chief information officer Anne F. Thomson Reed said that third-party contractors will help with the transition, but that MCI WorldCom's support for the switchover was a factor in its selection over competing contractor Sprint Corp. "It was a unanimous decision within the department," Reed said.
CIO Council: The next stop is security
As personnel costs rise, agencies will become more dependent on information technology to do their jobs, said G. Edward DeSeve, the outgoing chairman of the federal Chief Information Officers Council. Before a standing-room-only crowd of more than 400 people at a keynote session last month at the FOSE trade show in Washington, the CIO Council's executive leadership painted a picture of the government IT landscape when the year 2000 problem no longer monopolizes time and resources.
USPS starts on foundation for electronic services
The Postal Service has awarded a four-year, $22 million noncompetitive contract to Secure Computing Corp. to help develop and implement its Security Infrastructure Plan. USPS is modernizing its business practices to be Web-enabled, said John Sekevitch, vice president and general manager of professional services for the San Jose, Calif., company. "The idea is to become more competitive," he said.
Professional Calendar
Luncheon address. Washington. Contact Government Computer News; phone: 301-650-2000; Web: www.gcn.com. Conference. Atlantic City. N.J. Contact MailCom; phone: 607-746-7600; Web: www.mailcom-conference.com. Federal webmasters workshop. Bethesda, Md. Contact the World Wide Web Federal Consortium; phone: 703-288-0171; e-mail: fedweb@encmkt.com; Web: www.fedweb.org. Conference. Salt Lake City. Contact Hill Air Force Base; phone: 801-777-7411; e-mail: dovenbad@software.hill.af.mil; Web: www.stc-online.org.
Have lengthy files you want to view on a single screen?
The 15-inch ViewSonic VPD150 digital LCD monitor will turn your perceptions upside-down, or at least sideways. ViewSonic Corp. understands that many Web pages are designed as if on paper—longer top to bottom than side to side. Especially at higher resolutions, the viewing is better and easier with the monitor turned on its side. To reverse the 12-inch side-to-side and the 9-inch top-to-bottom viewing areas, simply rotate the VPD150 on its swivel base.
What to have—and have not—in 1999
Technology developments never cease. So, how do you figure out what you must buy and what you really don't need? To help you out, reviewers in the GCN Lab came up with a list of what to buy and what to pass on. You're hungry for the fastest computer out there, and, at 500-MHz, the Pentium III looks prime. But don't rush to get it. At present, Intel Corp.'s newest processor delivers only a few extra megahertz
Lab Notes
Susan M. Menke smenke@gcn.com Humvee stand-in. Panasonic Personal Computer Co. did not drive a Humvee over its ToughBook CF-25 notebook computer at the FOSE show in Washington last month, as the vendor has done in the past. Instead, Panasonic's booth crew set up a mechanical arm to drop the notebook repeatedly a distance of 2 feet onto a metal surface.
GCN INTERVIEW | Jerry Edgerton, driver of MCI WorldCom's FTS 2001 bus
| Jerry Edgerton, senior vice president of government markets for MCI WorldCom Inc. and its forebear MCI Communications Corp., has overseen work on a broad range of federal networks, although his company was frozen out of FTS 2000 long-distance business for the last decade. In January, MCI WorldCom won a share of the General Services Administration's FTS 2001, the largest government telecommunications contract ever awarded. MCI will compete with Sprint Corp. for an
USDA plans 21 city networks
Who will share nets? The so-called Group 1 cities probably will become concentration or hub nodes on a new nationwide backbone Agriculture is planning. The idea is to consolidate traffic in cities with the highest traffic volumes and the most facilities, said Gordon Durflinger, leader of the business services team for USDA Telecom Services and Operations.
HUD aims to raise its public profile with computer kiosks nationwide
The Housing and Urban Development Department this year will finish installing 95 computer kiosks—including five traveling units—across the nation to provide housing information to the public. Through the HUD Next Door program, the kiosks let users pull up data about agency services and topics such as affordable rents, housing discrimination and home buying.
HUD systems upgrade to improve services
The Housing and Urban Development Department wants to improve its image, and senior staff members figure one way to do that is by upgrading HUD systems to improve access for department users and the public. Fairly or unfairly, HUD has become the poster child for what's wrong with the federal bureaucracy, department officials said. It's an image HUD Secretary Andrew M. Cuomo wants to erase.
Two agencies see future in NetWare 5
Countering a federal drift toward Microsoft Windows NT Server on departmental networks, the Customs Service and the Postal Service have made major commitments to the Novell NetWare network operating system. Customs has installed NT Workstation 4.0 on its desktop PCs. But the service last year decided to postpone a planned network migration to NT Server 4.0 in favor of a NetWare 5 upgrade, said Luke McCormack, acting director of Custom's Infrastructure Services Division.
App helps NSA speed-clean U.S. secret documents
When President Clinton signed a 1995 executive order to declassify government documents after 25 years, the National Security Agency faced the task of sifting through tens of millions of pages much earlier than it had expected. Prior to Executive Order 12598, classified documents had to be held 50 years before NSA would declassify them.
Campbell: Army won't limit product choices
The Army's chief information officer wants it clear that the service will not standardize on specific products, such as Microsoft Exchange, for messaging and other applications. "All products have a future in the Army," said Lt. Gen. William Campbell, director of information systems for command, control, communications and computers. "We don't standardize on products; we standardize on standards. That's the driver."
Network diagnostic tools
Tips for buyers Sidebars & Related Stories The term network diagnostics evokes an image of engineers crawling in overhead wiring ducts and carrying hardware and software probes to measure cable signal parameters or wielding protocol analyzers to record and display network traffic data.
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